Ugh - Power Outage

[ExFlyBoy5]

We finally bit the bullet and got a 9500 watt generator after this month's ice storm. Last year we went a couple days without power but this time around, we went 10 days without power. It was pretty miserable, but things could have been worse. The loss of food sucked, but not nearly as much as losing 30+ mature trees and the big ass bill to clean up the mess.

We debated getting a whole house generator, but for a myriad of reasons, we decided on a portable. We already have a interlock (previous owner also had a portable generator) and it's all ready to go. The only modification we made was to hook it up to our natural gas. All in, we are just under $1000. It will run fridge/freezer/well pump and most of the lights and small appliances. If we want to run the water heater, we have to "load shed" the well pump. AC use isn't a concern since most of our outages are in the winter...and we have a gas fireplace.

I would say about 1/2 of our neighbors have whole house generators (one neighbor is a Generac dealer/installed) and another 1/4 have portable generators. After this last storm, I would guess most of us will have one.

Edit: I have seen some comments on the noise of the Generac. Well, there are 5 of them on our street alone and while you can hear them, they aren't that bad. I will say that not one person had an issue with failure during the 10 day outage. So, they make a dependable generator even if they are a bit noisy. Of course, it doesn't hurt that all the lots are at least an acre, so houses aren't stacked on each other...which will make a difference.

 

[Jerry1]

A bit over a whole day and power is back on!

Thanks for the input - good discussion re: generators. Having one sure made things a lot better.

 

[njhowie]

Our portable is a Cummins/Onan - bought off of Costco's website in the very early days of eCommerce for Costco...coming up on 20 years soon. The thing is a workhorse. I bought a transfer switch and had local electrician install. Wife and county inspector both thought I was crazy at the time. Now I get the last laugh...I just wink at DW everytime I fire it up. It's feeding 8 circuits in the house which gets all the important things. We ran it for a full week straight during Sandy, and ran about 300 feet of extension cord to the neighbor to give them some juice. We are in a sparsely populated area, so no issues with how loud the thing is.

 

[Nick12]

One aspect of having a whole house generator is if you have nearby jealous neighbors they may ask if they can borrow your power by bringing an extension cord from their house to yours. I knew the neighbors next to me age 84 and 87 didn't have a generator and I used a long extension cord from my garage to their garage so I could help them out to power their fridge , a few lights and their cell phone when our neighborhood lost power for a week. We learned how to sleep with the extremely loud whole house Generac generator over time. Melatonin works wonders. It apparently helps with resale of the home also. If the Generac is right underneath your bedroom window you will not be able to sleep. Try to sleep in another part of the house.

 

[Time2]

One aspect of having a whole house generator is if you have nearby jealous neighbors they may ask if they can borrow your power by bringing an extension cord from their house to yours. I knew the neighbors next to me age 84 and 87 didn't have a generator and I used a long extension cord from my garage to their garage so I could help them out to power their fridge , a few lights and their cell phone when our neighborhood lost power for a week. We learned how to sleep with the extremely loud whole house Generac generator over time. Melatonin works wonders. It apparently helps with resale of the home also. If the Generac is right underneath your bedroom window you will not be able to sleep. Try to sleep in another part of the house.

I was did something a little similar almost 40 years ago! I lost power from an ice storm. I went out and bought a kerosene heater, shortly after I got that working, I noticed steam coming from my neighbor's dryer vent. I investigated and found they had power, the break was between their house and mine. I ran an extension cord to get the furnace going. I had gas heat but needed the electric to make the fan run.

 

[street]

I don't have one, but have thought about just getting a small 3 KVA size, but never have. I live in rural area where we can be out for 2 to 3 days at the worst with a storm. That doesn't happen often in the last 40 years. At most 3 to 5 hours and everything is back up running.
Even in a rural area I really can't justify one. Now if someone needed power because of health issues, then that would be another story.

 

[CRLLS]

Our power outage last Summer had me looking at generators. We were 1 day without power. The electric company expected we would be without power for another 4-5 days. We have a well and a lift pump for the septic. With no power we had no lights, water or sewer. I went looking and everyone locally was sold out. I drove 20 miles to a friend's house to borrow a small generator to keep the fridge powered. Just for grins, We went to 2 stores and found a bigger 5500W (continuous) generator. So I bought it.

I jerry rigged the 120-0-120 wiring to our electrical box. The relatively small generator would power anything I wanted it to including our house A/C, just not all at one time. We were cautious about when we used the water, keeping the well pump from powering up. That little generator was a life saver for another 1-1/2 day when the power company had power restored 2+ days early. I need to make the generator hookup more legal (safe).

 

[Car-Guy]

We have multiple power outages here every year that last a hour or more.... When I say multiple, it's probably 8 to 10, maybe more some years... Plus several more "blips" that last between 2 and 5 seconds... A 2 second blip is more than enough to make my DirectTV receiver and Internet modem reboot. Direct TV takes about 15 to 20 minutes to recover and the Internet modem takes about 2 minutes before it's back up. Plus these outages, blips, dips, surges, etc can destroy sensitive electronics... Sooooo, I bought a couple of inexpensive UPS's for my "entertainment center" and my "communications equipment"... The UPS protects against most electrical events and keep things up and running until the generator is on line. So no reboots... Plus I added simple surge protectors for many other circuits.

I do need to replace the UPS batteries every few years but that's cheap insurance, in my case.. Works well for me....

 

[braumeister]

I don't have one, but have thought about just getting a small 3 KVA size, but never have.

That can be a viable option for some.
In our last house I had a Honda portable generator of around that size. It was remarkably quiet (I think Hondas are generally the quietest brand).

I got it when we had an outage of nearly six days after Hurricane Ike in 2008.

What I wanted was something to run the refrigerator, a few lights, a microwave, and a couple of small heaters (not all at once). The heaters were mainly just to keep the pipes from freezing if the outage occurred in mid-winter. As it turned out, we only had to use it a couple of times for about one day each, but it did give me peace of mind.

 

[Souschef]

Living in Central Coast California, the power company has notified customers that in case of extreme fire danger, they will shut off power.
I bought a Genrac 4500 watt generator. There was a 6500 watt generator available, but the salesman told me it was returned because the customer could not get it out of his truck because of the weight.
I bought some heavy duty extension cords and could power our refrigerator and freezer for openers. One thing I did was to get a 6 foot heavy duty appliance extension cord so we would not have to pull out the refrigerator to get to the plug.
we also got a power strip to put on a table near the generator so neighbors could charge their phones, etc.
I also bought fuel stabilizer to put in both the generator and the gas can.

 

[Walt34]

I need to make the generator hookup more legal (safe).

Please do. There are some really bad things that can happen with improperly done generator hookups. Many of them involve electrocutions, fires and explosions. If you're lucky only a burned out circuit breaker.

 

[travelover]

Please do. There are some really bad things that can happen with improperly done generator hookups. Many of them involve electrocutions, fires and explosions. If you're lucky only a burned out circuit breaker.

There is an inexpensive way to do this safely. Buy an interlock for the service box that allows only the main breaker or a nearby breaker to be on at the same time. The nearby breaker is wired to generator input plug box.


https://www.geninterlock.com/manufa...JswG0cOtzliiuYnp8vm8-SdimAzu-0vgaAgZSEALw_wcB

 

[CRLLS]

Please do. There are some really bad things that can happen with improperly done generator hookups. Many of them involve electrocutions, fires and explosions. If you're lucky only a burned out circuit breaker.

I am well aware of the issues. I did things semi-safely even though they were just temporary at the time. The line breaker was manually turned off, then the 240 from the gen was powered thru a 240V socket. It backfed my box thru a thermal type circuit breaker. I'm not sure exactly how a circuit breaker would get burned out though. The system is not foolproof in preventing backfeed the AC line though as the NEC requires.

There is an inexpensive way to do this safely. Buy an interlock for the service box that allows only the main breaker or a nearby breaker to be on at the same time. The nearby breaker is wired to generator input plug box.


https://www.geninterlock.com/manufa...JswG0cOtzliiuYnp8vm8-SdimAzu-0vgaAgZSEALw_wcB

Such an interlock and a male wall input are on the list of bringing it up to code, along with the necessary 10/4 cable for the next power outage.

 

[street]

Our power outage last Summer had me looking at generators. We were 1 day without power. The electric company expected we would be without power for another 4-5 days. We have a well and a lift pump for the septic. With no power we had no lights, water or sewer. I went looking and everyone locally was sold out. I drove 20 miles to a friend's house to borrow a small generator to keep the fridge powered. Just for grins, We went to 2 stores and found a bigger 5500W (continuous) generator. So I bought it.

I jerry rigged the 120-0-120 wiring to our electrical box. The relatively small generator would power anything I wanted it to including our house A/C, just not all at one time. We were cautious about when we used the water, keeping the well pump from powering up. That little generator was a life saver for another 1-1/2 day when the power company had power restored 2+ days early. I need to make the generator hookup more legal (safe).

That last sentence is a big deal!! Generators need to be connected to the grid with all safety equipment installed. Transfer switch will save some lineman his life!!!

 

[NW-Bound]

I have a DIY solar storage system, with 8 kW of solar panels charging 35 kWh of lithium battery powering 4 inverters capable of 9.6 kW total output.

Sounds great, but the solar panels do not produce enough juice to fully charge the battery most of the time of year due to shading. And the battery cannot power the inverters if they are all simultaneously loaded. And there's no way the 4 inverters can run the entire home.

But in the case of a power outage, which happens only once or twice here in the last 30 years and the longest was only 3 or 4 hours, I would still have my fridges cold, lights still on, plus 2-1/2 ton of AC cooling (entire home needs the 5-ton AC). No use of the oven, but I can cook with a portable induction cooktop, or the microwaves, or an air fryer, or an Instant Pot, or the toaster ovens (only 3 can be on at a time).

This solar system has been powering some of my home circuits via an automatic transfer switch, while the remaining circuits stay on the grid, such as the range, the cloth dryer. The pool pump and the water heater are currently manually switched between the grid and the solar system, depending on the expected output of the solar panels, which varies with the time of year and the weather.

For a grid outage, I would need to supplement the solar panels with the output of a generator to charge the battery. I would need a very beefy electrical cord to run from where my motorhome is parked to the backyard shed where all the DIY stuff is. The battery storage means I would not need to run the generator 24 hours/day. But again, power outage is such a rare event here (knock on wood).

 

[TimeMeasure]

What I ended up with is the one pictured below, no longer made, but they make better ones now.... Honda now makes a 7,000 watt inverter generator that is priced at ~$4,500 which would be the one to look hard at if you're not going to get a whole house set. It is also very quiet.... It connects to the house with a heavy (10 gauge?) cord that has to weigh 50 pounds via a transfer switch.

We have a set-up very similar to this. Honda EU6500iS generator, very quiet, although heavy wheeled unit. One of the benefits of this unit is that it generates very “clean” power - better for appliances etc. It’s sufficient to run most of the important things in the house - furnace, refrigerator, lights, well pump, etc. Pretty much everything except the AC (due to large initial draw).

We also have an interlock - simple manual metal toggle, so that the house is either powered by line utility, or generator, never both - prevents backfeed into the utility which could kill a lineman.

One thing I’d be interested to hear is what folks do for safe fuel storage. This particular unit is powered by gasoline, not propane or natural gas. Storing the gasoline cans in the garage seems less than ideal (fumes, fire hazard, etc.). Storing them outside, likewise (temperature fluctuations in sunlight, proximity to house if in shade). Buying a ventilated shed is possible but seems like overkill price-wise. And there seems to be a dearth of smaller, ventilated enclosures. There must be an ideal solution, just haven’t run across it yet.

 

[gauss]

^

I store 2 - 2 gallon (4 gal total) red plastic gasoline containers in the garage and have not really thought much about it. That is plenty to start my Honda EU2000i ~2Kwatt portable generator. I then drive to the gas station to refill them once the generator power is up and stable.

-gauss

 

[Golden sunsets]

We are in the midst of installing a 22K whole house Generac. We committed to this particular brand, model and contractor at the end of September, after meeting with 5 different contractors and generator brands. We decided to go with Generac rather than Kohler, based on our electrician's advice. There is such a backlog(I suspect due to Covid), that it won't be installed until January 7th. The dealer told us the generators are on back order and ours won't come in until December. Then the installer, an arm of the dealer, which coordinates the install, couldn't get a commitment from the power company to cut the power for the duration of the install until January 7th. So the pad is set, the trench dug and conduit placed, and additional propane tank set. Generator delivery, final wiring, gas connections and electrical panel work to occur 1/7. Total cost = $9,300. So complicated.


We got caught during the famous 1999 ice storm, and were without power for 5 days, during January in Northern New England. That was not a pleasant experience. So as we aren't going south for the winter for the first time in 12 years, we thought this would be a good investment.

 

[CRLLS]

[/B]
That last sentence is a big deal!! Generators need to be connected to the grid with all safety equipment installed. Transfer switch will save some lineman his life!!!

I agree 110%. I would never, ever, back feed the grid.

Please note that the service connection from the breaker box to the grid was disconnected before any generator power energized my breaker box. And the generator was disconnected before breaker box was re-connected to the grid. I am well aware of the issues. This was a temporary connection. At no time was a lineman at risk.

 

[street]

Your a intelligent person so I knew you were aware of the safety issue. I wasn't trying to blame or belittle anyone on their knowledge. Just wanted to reinforce the hazard of what could be a bad ending.

There has been many electrical burned people from a back feed situation involving generators.

 

[CRLLS]

No offence taken street.

A caution of the risks is always good. One never knows who might be reading these posts in the future.

Peace!

 

[Time2]

No offence taken street.

A caution of the risks is always good. One never knows who might be reading these posts in the future.

Peace!

Ya, it could be some future reader saying, "who gets power from the grid anymore!

 

[Koolau]

^

I store 2 - 2 gallon (4 gal total) red plastic gasoline containers in the garage and have not really thought much about it. That is plenty to start my Honda EU2000i ~2Kwatt portable generator. I then drive to the gas station to refill them once the generator power is up and stable.

-gauss

Would that be 4 to 8 hours for that size generator? Probably enough for most situations. I was just thinking back and the major power outages I've experienced, here and on the mainland, affected fueling stations as well. IIRC car manufacturers have also made it more difficult to siphon fuel from tanks. I guess we all give it our best shot and then hope for the best.

Here in our building, we are not allowed generators. Fortunately, lack of home power isn't usually life-threatening in the Islands. We just prepare for having enough light with several LED lanterns and flashlights. We don't open the fridge once the lights go out, so roughly 24 hours for food storage. We keep enough water stored to flush for at least 24 hours since we eventually lose water in a lengthy power outage. Just one more YMMV situation.

 

[Walt34]

One thing I’d be interested to hear is what folks do for safe fuel storage. This particular unit is powered by gasoline, not propane or natural gas. Storing the gasoline cans in the garage seems less than ideal (fumes, fire hazard, etc.).

When we were in the D.C. area the house had a detached shed a good 70-80 feet from the house (or any other structure) and I kept ~eight or so 5 gal. cans stored in there. Here we have an attached shed under the screened-in back porch so the caution level has gone up and I keep two or three 5 gal. cans there. The contents are rotated every six months or so to the vehicles and then refilled with fresh fuel and Sta-bil added. This system obviously is only good for as long as I can still carry a full 5 gal. can.

 

[travelover]

............

One thing I’d be interested to hear is what folks do for safe fuel storage. This particular unit is powered by gasoline, not propane or natural gas. Storing the gasoline cans in the garage seems less than ideal (fumes, fire hazard, etc.). Storing them outside, likewise (temperature fluctuations in sunlight, proximity to house if in shade). Buying a ventilated shed is possible but seems like overkill price-wise. And there seems to be a dearth of smaller, ventilated enclosures. There must be an ideal solution, just haven’t run across it yet.

I have a separate detached shed where I try to keep at least 6 gallons of gas, but I also added a natural gas conversion kit to my 6000 watt generator. A number of companies sell them, though I did my own conversion so the generator can run on gasoline or natural gas (or propane).